Studio offers unconventional yoga practices // PHOTO GALLERY

A yoga participant strikes a pose on paddleboards during a yoga paddleboard class at Yoga Elements in Carillon Beach on the west end of Panama City Beach on Thursday.

Andrew P. Johnson | The News Herald

By VALERIE GARMAN / The News Herald

Published: Friday, March 29, 2013 at 05:44 PM.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — A new Panama City Beach yoga studio is truly conquering the elements.

Yoga Elements, an intimate studio in Carillon Beach Village, is living up to its name by offering unique classes in standup paddleboard yoga, aerial yoga and aquatic yoga.

Instructor LauraLynn Jansen said she has yet to find another studio in the world that offers everything Yoga Elements does.

“Even though we have these nontraditional methods, you really have to go back to the roots of yoga to do them,” said Jansen, who started practicing yoga 26 years ago during a battle with cancer. “Our motto is, ‘We provide the earth, the water and air; you bring the fire.’ ”

Co-owned by Jansen and her business partner Dawn Brooks, the studio recently joined forces with Walkin’ on Water Paddleboards, owned by Gabriel Gray, to provide a one-stop shop for yoga and paddleboarding in the area.

Through the business merger, Jansen’s unconventional paddleboard yoga classes, which are held on the waters of Lake Carillon outside the studio’s back door, have been a huge success. Jansen also teaches aquatic yoga through the studio at a nearby Carillon Beach pool and at the Panama City Beach Aquatic Center at Frank Brown Park.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — A new Panama City Beach yoga studio is truly conquering the elements.

Yoga Elements, an intimate studio in Carillon Beach Village, is living up to its name by offering unique classes in standup paddleboard yoga, aerial yoga and aquatic yoga.

Instructor LauraLynn Jansen said she has yet to find another studio in the world that offers everything Yoga Elements does.

“Even though we have these nontraditional methods, you really have to go back to the roots of yoga to do them,” said Jansen, who started practicing yoga 26 years ago during a battle with cancer. “Our motto is, ‘We provide the earth, the water and air; you bring the fire.’ ”

Co-owned by Jansen and her business partner Dawn Brooks, the studio recently joined forces with Walkin’ on Water Paddleboards, owned by Gabriel Gray, to provide a one-stop shop for yoga and paddleboarding in the area.

Through the business merger, Jansen’s unconventional paddleboard yoga classes, which are held on the waters of Lake Carillon outside the studio’s back door, have been a huge success. Jansen also teaches aquatic yoga through the studio at a nearby Carillon Beach pool and at the Panama City Beach Aquatic Center at Frank Brown Park.

“The aquatic yoga is really great for pregnant women, seniors, anyone who has a physical-type challenge,” Jansen said. “We try to think about what the population is here and what will work for them.”

Many of the studio’s patrons also have embraced aerial yoga as a way to ease tension in the most strained part of the body.

Aerial yoga, taught by Brooks, is practiced using a fabric hammock suspended from the studio ceiling, combining traditional poses with an aerialist’s training methods.

“It’s very therapeutic for the spine and hips, which is where a lot of people have issues with their bodies,” Brooks said. “Gravity does a lot of the work.”

Brooks said the aerial element allows people to give yoga poses a completely different dynamic.

For both Jansen and Brooks, yoga started first as a way of helping themselves.

“I had just done it for myself and then I started teaching at cancer wards in northern California,” said Jansen, who also has taught yoga at military bases and uses it to incorporate mindfulness for a nonprofit youth leadership project she began.

“It’s all a helping thing,” Brooks said. “You can’t help other people until you help yourself.”